A Few Minutes with Ron Bailey

Earlier this week I spent some time chatting with Reason magazine’s superb science and technology writer, Ron Bailey, about all kinds of things. The short video here (2:30 long) talks about the findings of the Yale Cultural Cognition Project, which throw cold water on the “if only people were more informed” argument. Some types of people get more irrational when they have more information about a subject. (The typology Bailey refers to comes from the late distinguished political scientist Aaron Wildavsky, who thought people’s social outlook and risk tolerance could be divided into four basic types: egalitarians, hierarchicalists [someone has to be in charge!], individualists, and communitarians.) We shot the video outside in Bozeman, Montana, so you can hear the low roar of traffic in the background.